Do You Feel Conflicted In Your Grief?
Has COVID-19 brought up old grief or brought on new grief?
Have you lost someone or something you love?
Have overwhelming and intense feelings about your loss led to difficulty coping with everyday life?
Has your response to your loss led to challenges in your relationships with partners, family members, children, or coworkers?
Do you want to move through your grief and get back to a more normal state of living?
It can be painful and confusing when you lose a loved one through death, divorce or separation, or experience other types of losses, such as those we are all dealing with through a worldwide pandemic. Not everyone grieves the same.
Life is forever different and you’re not sure how to live after loss. You may be able to go through the motions of daily life, tending to relationships, parenting, your work, your health, etc. But you may feel quite disconnected at the same time. You are caught between two worlds and it can often be lonely, frustrating, and confusing. Focusing can be a challenge. Energy and motivation can be low. Sleep can be hit or miss and you may feel physically and emotionally drained most of the time. It can feel like the “new normal” is anything but normal and will never end.
Everyone Faces Loss
While the death of a loved one is often thought of as the biggest cause of grief, it’s not the only one. Any change in our “normal” can be considered a loss, whether it’s losing a relationship, saying goodbye to children moving out of the home, re-careering, caring for ill family members, the list goes on. Also, our entire world is going through loss right now with the pandemic. Loss of life as we knew it, our ideals, financial security, freedom, etc. Loss in one form or another is unavoidable. Our reaction to loss can trigger grief symptoms of anxiety or depression and lead to long-term challenges if not addressed.
No matter how you’ve come to grieve, your experience is valid and real. You may be experiencing grief symptoms such as difficulty sleeping, eating, thinking, and managing your everyday routines. You may forget things easily, have difficulty concentrating, or get irritated with others quickly. You may feel numb or disconnected from the reality of your loss. You may feel intense emotions, like anger, guilt, sadness, or fear. You may experience a combination of all of these in what I call “riding the wave”, the experience of things changing often, up and down, like the waves in the ocean or a roller-coaster ride.
There is no wrong way to grieve. Whatever you are experiencing, feeling, or doing is okay. The good news is that with the help of a compassionate, experienced grief counselor you can move through your grief to find your new normal of living with life after loss.
Grief Counseling Can Help You Thrive After Loss
Moving through the grief process requires courage, which can be difficult to embrace when it feels like your world has fallen apart. Your first instinct may be just to hold your head down and “get through it.” But how do you do that when it may be hard to even motivate yourself to get out of bed?
Grief counseling can help you move through loss at your pace and with a grief counselor specifically trained in facilitating the healing process.
One of the questions I get asked most often when it comes to grief is “is this normal?” Clients often worry that their experience of grief is wrong. Well-meaning friends and family members often put their own judgements on how we “should” feel and how we “should” act in response to a loss. They’re trying to help, but this sort of reaction can often make things worse for you, leading to feelings of isolation and not wanting to reach out to for help.
In our sessions, we’ll address your individual needs, concerns, and goals. My first objective is to help you feel safe and validated in your own experience of grief, which is unique to you. You’ll quickly see that the word “should” is on my list of “least helpful things” to say to anyone (including yourself). I use a combination of tools and techniques to help you identify your underlying feelings (which may be harder than you think), manage any mixed feelings (which happens a lot more than you may think), and honor the loss (which is necessary for moving on). We’ll also use a strengths-based approach to identify and strengthen your ability to positively cope with stress as you move through the grief process.
You may not believe you can work through your grief, but I will challenge you to trust the grief process, which may seem like one step forward, two steps back at times. Moving through grief is not a linear process and will not look the same as another person’s grief or even your own grief from a different loss. Again, the grief process takes courage. And I will be there to support you as you courageously move through your grief journey.
Aside from my education and experience (which you can read more about here), I’ve also been personally touched by incredible loss and complicated grief. As an adult child of a mother with narcissistic tendencies, I sought grief counseling to work through the loss of the mother I wish I had. Then, after she died, I was in counseling to deal with that grief. My grief (both before and after my mother died) was an unexpected journey that many people close to me did not quite understand. Therapy helped me sort out the complexities of my own grief, which, on top of the extensive grief training I’ve had, I believe has made me a better grief counselor to help guide others through their own grief.
But You May Still Have Questions or Concerns About Grief and Loss Counseling…
Think of grief counseling as an investment in yourself and your emotional well-being. You’ll have a partner who is a trained and licensed mental health professional to guide you through conflicting or complicated feelings, honoring your loss, and coming up with simple and personalized tools to help ease your pain and suffering.
In all my years as a therapist (nearly 20), I have yet to hear a client who has committed to therapy say that they were worse off after our sessions. In fact, most of my clients say they feel better in the first session knowing they have a safe place to get help. While the therapeutic process can bring up some discomfort as you talk about difficult memories, thoughts, and feelings, the goal of therapy is to heal old wounds, decrease distressing symptoms, learn new skills, and increase life satisfaction and happiness.
I get it. It can feel like a daily struggle just to get out of bed, take care of yourself, take care of others, work, and get everything done before it starts all over again. However, sometimes, in an effort to “keep up,” we put our emotional well-being last. We say things like, “Someday I’ll have the time.” Unfortunately, not making time for yourself can lead to increased anxiety, stress, and burnout. Therapy, both the time and money spent, is an investment that pays off in the long run. Investing in your mental and emotional health now could be the best decision you make toward feeling happy and fulfilled in the future.
The goal of grief counseling is not to help you “get over it.” The goal is to help you move through it and learn tools to cope with the ongoing process of grief. Grief doesn’t just go away. But your ability to deal with the waves of grief that come up will get better when you have support and tools to help you in those moments.
You Can Find Joy After Loss
I invite you to book a free 15-minute phone consultation so we can talk, ask each other some questions, and decide a good next step for you (even if it’s not working with me). Click on the BOOK FREE CONSULT button to schedule and learn more about online grief counseling in the Phoenix, AZ metro area and throughout Arizona.
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